


Fragments

by Churbooseanon



Series: For Every Action, A Reaction [11]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-05
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-02-03 14:03:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 15,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1747289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Churbooseanon/pseuds/Churbooseanon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lives are a series of moments. Those moments build us up into who we are.</p><p>A series of brief glimpses into the lives most affected by Project Freelancer and the moments that bridge the point between the abandonment of the program by most of its agents and the point where one man tried to forcefully reunite them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Words to Avoid

**Author's Note:**

> This is mostly going to be a series of short pieces set in the For Every Action, A Reaction AU I am working on. The stories will be posted as they are made, with no real order behind them other than what I am moved to write when. I'll try to make notes of where they would occur in the AU's timeline as roughly or accurately as I can manage to pinpoint them. 
> 
> This round we get to see Church and Tucker dealing with some of the... eccentricities of their Captain.

“Uh... Church, did Captain Flowers get a call from Command this morning?”

Church tried to resist the urge to roll his eyes at the question. Unsurprisingly, he failed spectacularly. Still, the other soldier was standing there, watching him, shifting nervously from foot to foot. Well, what else did he expect from a rookie like Tucker?

Okay, so maybe 'rookie' wasn't fair. Tucker had been here for over a month now, but he still was the newest member of their unit since Jenkins had actually managed to catch a shot through the throat from that inept orange guy on the other side of the canyon. But, no, fuck that. Tucker was clearly still getting used to his armor, making little abortive movements every now and then as if he was going to run his fingers through his hair or something. 

“Well, as you know, Tucker,” Church said with exaggerated care, “I'm clearly the Captain's fucking keeper so I can definitely say that I have _no_ motherfucking clue whether he got a call from Command this morning. And if he did, it wouldn't be our fucking business unless he told us it was, now would it?”

“Geez Church,” Tucker grumbled, all nervousness replaced by frustration, “it was only a question.”

Yeah, and he was full of those. Church's least favorite one was 'why the fuck are we out here in the middle of a fucking box canyon?' Like he fucking understood it after nearly half a year of being deployed in the ass end of nowhere. Hell, even the Captain didn't seem to get just why, or if he did, he wasn't sharing with the class.

“I don't know. Maybe he did. If so then we're probably getting the same stupid shit as always. 'Try and do better.' You know, the usual. Or maybe an order to actually go attack red base.” The latter was his favorite order, mostly because the Captain sent them over the cliffs to draw the red's attention for a bit, and then did whatever hocus pocus he did to sneak around behind them and damn was it funny when the red sergeant started cursing up a storm at his men for 'allowing the enemy to get behind their lines.' Priceless was what that fucking was. 

“Yeah, he's... he's doing the thing where he is sitting on the top of one of the pillars with his knife chuckling to himself.” 

Church froze, honest to god froze. Like, couldn't even think straight froze. Tucker had only been here long enough to see their Captain like this once before. Church, though, he was used to it. He'd been there when Flowers had spent almost a week up there, sharpening his knife to the point where Church and Jenkins had been certain that the Captain was going to sharpen its edge into oblivion. 

There was nothing predictable about when it would happen. No pattern Church had been able to pick out. There did seem to be some triggers, of course. There was a way that the Captain would stiffen at certain references. Mostly places. Like Jenkins had made the mistake of mentioning he was from Seattle back on Earth once, and the Captain had chuckled to himself and within an hour he was up top, playing with his knife and mumbling to himself and whenever they got close he ordered them away.

Jenkins had said there was probably something traumatic in the Captain's past that caused his reaction, and was the reason he never talked about it. Church hadn't been sure, but he had avoided things that seemed to trigger these moods in his CO. He always said 'clean' instead of 'wash,' he didn't mention his story about being drunk in New York ever again, and he never, _ever_ mentioned bubbles (but seriously why _bubbles_ ) .

“Tucker, remember how when you got here I told you there were things you didn't get to say in front of the Captain?”

“Yeah, Church, I'm not a fucking moron. Only had to make that mistake once to get the point. Fucking creepy. Anyway, that was why I was asking if Command called. You are pretty careful about that stuff, and he's up there anyway...” Tucker said, and Church could almost hear the other man chewing his lip. “I figured if anyone made the mistake it would be them.”

Church sighed and shook his head. “I'll... go talk to him. Why don't you, I don't know, do an inventory or something? I think the Captain was saying something about it being needed.”

“Fuck that,” Tucker grumbled, already turning and heading back toward his room. Leave it to Tucker to bring him a problem and then dodge all responsibility for it. 

With a sigh Church steeled himself before heading out to the ramp that would take him to the roof of their base. He wasn't entirely sure he could do anything, but he had to try, right? Flowers was just such a nice guy and a great Captain and he wanted to know just what it was that had set him off so he could avoid that in the future. 

Sure enough, just like Tucker said, he found Flowers on one of the tall cement protrusions, knife flipping through his fingers. Well, at least he wasn't sharpening it this time. Those were always the worst. Flowers barely even spoke when he was sharpening, and when he did his normally cheerful and friendly voice and a... disturbing edge to it. 

“Uh, Captain?”

Flowers actually turned enough to cast his gaze over his shoulder to look down at Church.

“Well good morning there, Private. What can I do for you?”

“Sorry to bug you, sir, but Tucker was kinda worried about you out here on your own. Are you okay?”

The chuckle Flowers gave him was low and made him shudder for reasons that Church couldn't really explain. There was just something way back in his head that was a bit scared of that noise. 

“I'm perfectly fine, Private Church. Just got a bit of news this morning about some old friends of mine.”

The dark edge to the word 'friends' made Church grimace, but Flowers was already looking away so he didn't feel too bad about it. 

“Oh, well... Um... That's good to hear.”

“Indeed it is, Church. Indeed it is.”


	2. Cockpit Confessionals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the moments between their escape and decisions of what to do with themselves, Texas and Four Seven Niner get a chance to discuss the whys.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set during Chapter Twenty of For Every Action.

“Nice of you to do this for them,” Lacey observed, and Tex just huffed into her helmet as she slung herself up into the seat behind the pilot. 

“Nice had nothing to do with it,” Tex grumbled as she adjusted to get comfortable—though really she should figure out what part of her programming it was that allowed her to be uncomfortable in the first place and just turn that off—and wasn't surprised to see Lacey's head come up briefly.

She could almost even hear the raised eyebrow in the pilot's voice. 

“You guys were in the middle of a pretty epically fucked up tale about what insane ends the husband of the woman you are the skewed memory of went to so he could have you back, _Allison._ And for reasons surpassing explanation you cut them off just as Wash seems to be winding down and don't counter immediately with our side? And for what? To give three guys in love the chance to reaffirm that love to each other?” Lacey chuckled and shook her head. “Sounds like you've got a soft spot about a mile wide.”

“Well, _Alyssa_ , you weren't back there to watch the idiots,” Tex growled. “I mean, if you had seen even _one_ of the looks they kept shooting at each other, you would have hurled those MREs you cram so eagerly while you're flying this hunk of metal.”

“Yeah, pretty much want to hurl them anyway. And if you tell any of them that name, I will punch you.”

“Like to see you try,” Tex chuckled. The challenge hit its mark because she got to watch as the woman formerly known only as Four Seven Niner rip her helmet off—really why the fuck was her hair neon blue—and turn around to glare up at her with a level of malice that Tex would have been surprised to see from even Carolina. 

“I will turn this bird around,” Lacey threatened, tone dark.

“Then you'll be with us when they bring out the handcuffs.”

“You know, I can see why Carolina couldn't stand you. You're a bit of a bitch.”

“Runs in the family,” Tex admitted with a shrug. “Guess if I was gonna pass something on to her, it would be that.”

“And the ability to take out someone about three times her size,” Lacey observed before shaking her head and returning her attention to her controls. “But seriously... You could have just stayed back there and forced the topic on. So either you wanted a breather, which I doubt because you don't seem the type to want to draw things out, or you were actively giving them privacy.”

“York is terrible at keeping his hands to himself. It was at the point where I had to leave or watch.”

“I can hear the lie in your voice, Tex. You're just moved to pieces by their tragic romance story.”

“Yeah, I've sorta had my fill of tragic romance stories. Enough for two life times. Maybe even three,” Tex grumbled as she sunk further down in her seat. Then, just for spite, she shifted her legs around so she could rest them on top of the panel in front of her. Because fuck Lacey.

“Hey... Don't put your feet up there!”

“Blow me,” Tex countered, more by rote than any real emotion. “Listen, they...”

“Here it comes, the tender hearted moment from the badass bitch of Project Freelancer. Oh please, bestow upon us your unending wisdom, Tex,” Lacey mocked and actually dodged to the side just before Tex could thrust one of her feet forward to kick the back of her head. 

“They've been through a lot, and it wasn't fucking fair and it wasn't their fault. It was Leonard's, and somehow he got one thing right with this shit. Somehow for as stupid as he's been since I died, he got one thing right. And that's them. So forgive me if I want to salvage the one thing he didn't fuck up.” Tex sighed and shook her head, “He couldn't even get his daughter right.”

“But it's more than that,” Lacey observed, and there was a certainty in her voice that Tex didn't see the point in avoiding. Because dammit, she was right.

“Alpha liked them,” Tex said at length, almost a whisper, but he saw Lacey nod in front of her. That was enough to put more volume into the next statement. “There was a reason that certain names came up more in Alpha's torture than others. I... don't remember as much about being Beta as I should. Asshole put some serious locks on my memory. But I remember us liking York. He's just got this personality that grows on you...”

“Like fungus,” Lacey agreed as she tapped in annoyance at a fuel read out. It only took two taps for the needle to move off of whatever it had caught on and start reading out properly. Really, Tex didn't understand the analog backups to digital systems, but she wasn't the one that designed these things. 

“Like fungus,” Tex agreed. “And North is a nice guy. Cares about everybody. Wash...”

Lacey chuckled and shook her head, “It's the rookie thing, isn't it?”

“Actually,” Tex admitted with a shake of her head, “It's more than that. Wash was the only one to come into the program right out of basic. I don't remember why the Director chose him. I think it might have had something to do with his scores and the fact that during his training there was a mistake where a live grenade was in with a batch of paint ones for practice. Wash had it thrown at him, grabbed it to throw back before it blew, sensed something off about it's weight, and tossed it into a ditch before flinging himself over it. Thing ended up being a dud, but that sort of action, willing to actually get yourself killed in training to protect your fellows... Maybe that was what drew the Director.”

“Shit, I hadn't heard any of that.”

“He never spoke about it, so I'm not surprised. I don't know. Either way Alpha really liked him. Maybe because he was so much like a kid. Hard not to want to help him and them when Alpha liked them so much and they were the _one_ thing the Director got right. But he managed to fuck even that up in the end. So damn if I'm not going to give them time to fix them...”

She was cut off by a voice, Wash's voice, raised and pleading and dear god it was somewhere on the border between embarrassing and flat out pornographic. 

“And there's that,” Lacey chuckled, her hand raising from her controls and moving back toward Tex, palm extended and beckoning. 

“And there was that,” Tex agreed with a smirk as Wash's cries continued to pierce through the metal fucking walls and door. She shifted so she could get at the roll of cash she'd stowed in one of her ammo pockets, stripped off a ten, and slapped it down on Lacey's upraised palm. “How the fuck...?”

“Gates, the guy who Miles nailed on my ground crew, said he's got a thing for teasing his partners. He gets off on the noises or something. And Wash seemed the type...”

“You know what,” Tex chuckled, shaking her head, “never mind. Pretend I didn't ask.”


	3. Burning the Past

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> South wakes up and the world is different from what she remembers. But she’ll make her own mark on it if it kills her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I saw some fanart with South and a box of photos of her and North. And this happened. Takes place some unknown point between the Freelancer Break-In and the Recovery One Miniseries.

She woke to a head full of ringing, a body full of ache, and a stomach full of revulsion and betrayal. 

There had been a couple of random PFL grunts leaning over her along with the Director and Counselor, and somehow, some _fucking_ how she had managed not to lunge at the Director and throttle him. It had all been his fault after all. His fault for bringing her here. His fault for the damn AIs and the leader board. His fault for picking North as well. His fault for Theta and Eta and Iota and Epsilon. 

His fault that she was stretched out on her cot right now, banging her head lightly against the wall her back was to, box of matches from her abandoned smoking habit in her hand, and her eyes were on the large box at the other side of the bed. 

It was full of pictures. Pictures of Nic, pictures of her, pictures of their father, pictures of everything. Their life together in a series of images. Them as children. Them as teens. Them in their Freelancer armor pulling a prank on Wyoming because they could. 

She hated photographs, always had. They were ridiculous. Pieces of paper with images, as fleeting and frivolous as everything else in the world. Nothing was permanent, nothing sacred, nothing lasting. Not even her. Not even Nic. Not even them. 

“Fuck it,” she spat as she pushed herself off the bed. The box of matches was still in her hand. The box of photos tucked easily under her arm. 

“Agent South, just what do you think you're doing?” a voice cut in through the speakers, and South just flipped off the speaker and camera in the corner. She was certain that on the other side of the video feed the Director was snorting at her in derision, but who the fuck gave any sorts of fucks about that old crazy's opinions on anything? Fuck him, fuck the Counselor, fuck everything. They had given her this, they had burdened her down with the things Nic hadn't taken, so fuck them. 

She set the box in the corner, under the speaker and camera. Opened the box of matches and drew out a single one. A simple piece of wood tipped with chemicals. A bit like her in a way. At her base she was just a woman, but she was topped off with armor and anger and weapons, and struck just the right way she would burn right through the world. 

She struck a match, reveled in the smell of sulfur and promise of the heat. 

“I would not...” the Counselor's voice cut for just a moment, and South repeated the obscene gesture. 

“I couldn't give any fucks about what you would and wouldn't do. So why don't you just calm your fucking tits or come down here and stop me?”

Neither of them said anything after that. Even captive, locked into this damn room until she gave them what they wanted, she was dangerous. They all knew it. 

The match burnt down, and she stared at the fire and creep of black char on the wood until it sputtered out on the metal tips of her armored fingers. At last she discarded the match into the box, drew out another, and struck it into life. This time she let the point of fire fall into the box. Nor did she leave it alone. Another three strikes, another three points of light, all tumbling down into the box. Already the flames were licking eagerly over the memories, over the history, and over Nic's face. The flames burned hungrily, consuming everything they touched, and they burned in her stomach too. Burned up from her core and rose through her body and seared her heart. Burned through her head until all that was left was cold steel. 

The box was blazing, an alarm was blaring, and South just strode away from the fire, back to her cot. She sat down and waited for someone to come in and put it out. They would, of course, they couldn't risk losing her. She knew she was the only thing they had left. They had a leader board, even in here, and her name was at the top. Other names were arrayed below her. Maine and Carolina and Wyoming and Florida. She'd laughed when she'd seen that, bitter and disbelieving, and she had known. 

They were dead or gone. Every last one of them. She was all they had left. 

She didn't move as the door opened and a man rushed through with an extinguisher. Soon the fire was out and the man was gone and South just stared defiantly up at the camera. 

“Are you satisfied now, Agent South?” the Director's voice came from the speaker at length. 

“That isn't my name,” she observed, calmer than she felt. 

“If you insist, Nicole.”

The laugh was short and bitter and defiant. “That isn't my name either.”

“What, then, would you prefer we call you?” the Counselor asked, attempting to mediate like he always did. 

“Recovery One,” she answered, and she heard the hard satisfaction in her voice. 

“So... You are accepting our proposal,” the Counselor observed.

“Consider the fire my application.”

“How...” the Counselor started, only to be cut off by the Director. Unsurprising, that man always got things faster than he should, or maybe just as fast as he should.

“Someone will be along to show you to your new quarters in a few minutes, Recovery One.”

The speaker went silent and Nicole stared at the ashes and char in the corner and tried not to think about what she had done. 

She couldn't let the past get in the way of her future. Not again. 

Nic was going to regret betraying her. Regret leaving her behind. 

She swore it.


	4. Work For Hire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wyoming has a prospective job set up, but he needs a bit more force to complete it than he can manage on his own.

He barely has to squeeze a trigger for the shot to crack through the air. Through the scope he can see the burst of dust, and there was a brief blur that was the rock he'd shot at flying off through the air. More than that, though, he could see the black armored form going utterly stiff. Of course that is only for half a second. Then the woman in his sights is gone, and while he tries to track her, she's faster than he can manage to trail in the scope. Not that it matters. He knows exactly where she's gone. He had selected this very location because the best cover she would be afforded here was a large rock. 

_“Hi to you too, Reggie. You know, you could have just called,”_ Tex's voice came over the frequency Wyoming had opened just for this purpose. He'd known she would go for it first thing, and it was a pleasure to find that expectation met. 

_“But you never seem to return my messages, Allison,”_ Wyoming chuckled, carefully readjusting as the plan called for. _“Really, I'm hurt.”_

_“You will be if you decide to take another shot at me. It takes a bit more than a bullet to take me down.”_

_“Of that I am quite certain. But it is also neither here nor there.”_

_“My motion trackers have you lining up a new coverage point.”_

Ah, that hadn't been expected. Still, he couldn't blame her for being attentive. While not quite PFL enemy number one, Texas was rather high up on the hunt list. After Maine and the trio, of course. Thanks to all of them, Wyoming was barely a blip on anyone's radars. That didn't change the fact that he and Gamma—who hovered in the back of his mind radiating distrust of his counterparts down the canyon below—were still sought after.

Which was, of course, what had brought them here. 

_“I assure you that it is only for my protection, my dear. You are quite an adept soldier, and I'd quite prefer to be able to account for that if our... discussion goes south.”_

_“And just what sort of discussion is that supposed to be?”_ Tex demanded, her voice radiating a bit of disdain, and yet he could sense the intrigue there, just as well as Gamma could.

_“You know the line of work I have taken up, do you not?”_ Wyoming asked as he carefully took his eye from the scope to glance at the rock. This had always been easier with a spotter of Florida's caliber at his die, but truly, he could live without. He hadn't gotten where he had in life by relying on others.

_False,_ Gamma declared in the back of his head. 

_Shut up. We're not playing that right now._

_False,_ Gamma repeated. We are always playing that game. It is what we are.

_True._

_“Who doesn't, Wyoming? Making good money?”_ Her tone was conversational, and Wyoming imagined that Tex had moved to lean casually against the rock, completely unfazed by the situation. She was a cooler customer than a sniper on a glacier. 

_“Good enough, but you know how difficult it can be to be a Freelancer on the run.”_

_“Ha ha,”_ Tex said dryly as he imagined she shook her head. _“I'd say it was a good one, nice word play, but all three of us would know better than that. Let's cut straight to the point. You've got an offer, don't you?”_

_“Ah, yes...”_ Wyoming sighed. This was the hard part. Tex was a mercenary sort of woman, had been before she had become a merc. They had all had their own motivations in PFL—except for maybe her—but they'd changed since leaving. Tex, so far as Gamma's data mining suggested, had proven to be motivated by money. But this situation was a touchier one, considering her history.

_“Spit it out, Reggie, before I cloak and leave.”_

_“You know that Gamma can easily detect you through said cloaking, do you not?”_

_False._

_Shut up._

“Can he now?” 

Some people were better at calling bluffs than others. With a sigh Wyoming pulled his hands away from his sniper rifle, raised them over his head with his fingers splayed, before he allowed himself to roll over. Sure enough once he was on his back he merely had to look up to see the familiar black armored figure of Tex, her magnum leveled straight at his helmet. 

“Ah, yes, well, there is that,” Wyoming agreed. “I suppose I should be concerned now.”

_False._

_You're really not doing much to help this conversation._

_True._

_Knock knock._

_Who's there?_

_Silence._

“I'm already getting bored, Wyoming. So what say we get this conversation over with so I can either agree and get this job started, or refuse and go my separate way.”

Which left out the completely possible third option of refuse and try to put a bullet through his helmet, leaving Wyoming to hope that Gamma's timing was still as spot on as it had been in the past. 

“It's a job, Tex, a rather good one. The pay is very substantial, and there are additional benefits,” Wyoming admitted, resisting the urge to chew his lip in his helmet. “Now why don't we act friendly and you let me up.”

“Naw, I think I prefer this for right now,” Tex answered, amusement abundantly clear in her voice. “Spit it out or try to spit out a bullet. I'm not really in the kind of mood necessary to deal with you or Gamma.”

“I've got a substantial bounty waiting to fall into my lap, but it's a two man job. The payout is enough to set us up for a lifetime, and it's dead or alive,” Wyoming said, knowing he was dodging around the actual bit of information Tex wanted. 

“Targets?”

“Just a few deserters...”

Her aim changed minutely and there were two loud bangs, one from the magnum, the other from the bullet striking the ground just by his head. 

“Listen, Wyoming, I don't have a problem with you. And honestly, I understand why you might be a little interested in the job. It's not the money, it's the freedom you think bringing them in can get you. But if you so much as _try_ to touch one of them, I will put three rounds through your head before you can get close,” Tex snarled. “I don't care _what_ the Director is offering you. No rogue agent gives their fellows over to PFL or puts them in harm's way. Understand?”

“Clearly,” Wyoming bit out, ignoring the alarm noises in the back of his head. At least it was nice to know Gamma was remotely concerned for his well being. Granted he was somewhat certain that was only because Gamma had no where else to go. Sure, they both knew that the whole AIs being deleted upon the death of their host was a patented lie, but that didn't mean Gamma wished to be trapped in his armor for recovery by some PFL unit.

They both knew what had been done to Alpha. They just hadn't cared. At least, not so far as it affected them. Gamma, though, wasn't willing to run the risk of additional experiments being run upon him were he to be recovered. 

“Good. And don't think I won't be watching, Wyoming. Remind yourself that I'm better than you, and you won't go wrong.”

One second Tex was there, the next even Gamma had trouble tracking her. That damn cloaking modification of hers was quite effective. Still, he saw the burst of dust when she leapt from the cliff, and Wyoming immediately rolled back to his rifle, searching for her landing point. 

_Broken._

A quick glance told him Gamma was right. When had Tex taken the time to step on the barrel of the thing? The flaw wasn't easily noticeable, but with Gamma the slight imperfection to the shape of the barrel was almost glaring. 

_True._

_Shall we see if we can't win the next? You mentioned some data which might point us to Florida?_

There was a minor wave of satisfaction in his head from Gamma. His AI had always seemed fond of the fellow. Maybe it was because the other man wove as many falsehoods around himself as Gamma did. Or maybe they were just more entertaining lies.


	5. Hunting Party

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Florida scopes his targets and finds himself in a conversation with an old friend.

Two days. He had spent two days on this roof, utterly still. Head low, sniper rifle braced against his shoulder. Cross hairs highlighting a window on the third floor, the sight inside obscured by relatively thick curtains. The mission timer in the corner of his helmet assured him there were five hours left before he had to go and rendezvous with the flight back from his 'vacation' that 'Blue Command' had insisted on. In a way it was a vacation, a holiday meant to be spent on his favorite hobby... hunting. 

A wavering whistle, a few rooftops over, drew his attention, made the man once known as Agent Florida and always feared as Butch Flowers switch over to a comm frequency he hadn't touched in years. 

_“Hey Reggie, what's up?”_

He got back the same low chuckle that always made him shiver, and he smiled at the sound of Reggie's voice as it floated through his speakers. 

_“Not much, Florida, how about you?”_

_“No one calls me that anymore, except for the bosses. So unless you plan on being my boss and giving me ordering me around, I think you better stick to Flowers.”_

Silence for a long moment, and for half of it he was hopeful that Wyoming would take the bait. Lord knew that would make the end of his little vacation far more pleasurable than the rest of it had been. He'd been set up here for days and knew he had about as much chance of them popping their heads out of their safe little haven now as he had the last few days.

How was it that the three had figured out to lay low just before he showed up in town? 

_“Ah, yes, well Flowers, I do find your presence here rather... appropriately timed. I have a proposition for you.”_

_“Oh Reggie, as much fun as it was to work with you all that time, we both know I can't just help you on something like what you're no doubt proposing.”_

_“The money would be quite good,”_ Wyoming assured him, and Flowers just chuckled as he slowly pushed himself up and began to disassemble his sniper rifle. With Wyoming here it wouldn't even be _fun_ to go after the three. Wyoming would want their bodies immediately to deliver to the Director. Flower's own plans were more... creative. 

_“Sometimes it's not about the money, Reginald.”_

_“Well, I did some looking in to you since I learned your name, Flowers. I have a hard time believing that I cannot find_ something _to tempt you with.”_

Oh, he probably could, but the price wouldn't quite match the job. And Flowers had never been in the habit of doing things he didn't see a real profit in. 

_“There is always a price for everything, Reggie. I can agree to that principle. But some prices are far harder to pay than others.”_

_“Such as?”_

Flowers glanced back over at the window that he knew his targets hid behind. He'd been tempted to climb the building and to through there, but apparently one of them—Wash most likely—had rigged the frame with explosives. The door to their apartment had been set up with an old claymore mine if he had any guess on an effective trap method—and Wash's records said he was very talented with them—and even without all of that there was still the trio itself, likely fully armored and ready for anything he might throw at them.

No, he'd have to come after them on his own terms, on a battle ground he had chosen for himself, set up to his advantage. It was, he admitted, less fun than taking down the enemy where they felt safest, but he wasn't going to mess up again, wasn't going to risk letting them escape everything he had planned for them. 

_“Those people you talked to, they didn't say why I joined Freelancer, did they?”_ Flowers asked, and he was met by a rueful chuckle. Apparently Wyoming hadn't, despite his best attempts. Well, at least that secret was one held by a very small number. Him, the Director, and David “Washington” Butler, aged twenty-four, currently unemployed and living under the alias of Tobias Murphy and residing with Alexander Kreloff and Paul Simon—really York what _were_ you thinking—aliases of one Nicolas “North Dakota” Howe and Miles “New York” Cunningham. David knew far more than he should have, and Flowers just couldn't live with that. 

_“No, I admit they were lacking in that detail. In fact, everyone I have spoken to finds your... patriotic decision quite alarming and out of your usual character.”_

Flowers smiled to himself as he resumed packing up his rifle. 

_“Sometimes we want to be part of something bigger,”_ Flowers suggested as he put the last piece into place and closed the case. 

_“Are you saying that was what motivated your decision?”_

Again he glared at the window and the prey beyond it. Three men, two of whom he was going to torture, for the sake of the third. Tie them all up and carve them to pieces, chunk by little chunk, and make him watch every last second. He had a very lovely chemical in one of his packs which would turn their nervous systems hyper sensitive, beyond what even their AI should allow them to block out—as if he wasn't going to rip those out first—and their pained screams would beautiful to the point where Flowers was going to record them for his own later enjoyment. Maybe he'd tape David's eyes open, force him to watch every last moment as his lovers screamed and pleaded for him to stop. And when he could take it no more, when David was crying and begging him to let them be, he'd open their throats right in front of his eyes. 

All of that before he even put a finger on David and pulled every last secret out of his mind, all without leaving a mark. 

It would be simple to tell the Director that he had to torture Wash's location out of his lovers, and that maybe he'd enjoyed it a bit too much. Without Gamma, or even Alpha, around to call him on it, would the Director be quite so good at sniffing out Flower's secrets? 

_“There is always more motivating me than meets the eye, Reggie. Oh, and if I ever see you again...”_

_“Yes, yes, I know. I won't have the privilege of seeing anything ever again.”_

Flowers chuckled again, lifted his case and started striding across the rooftop he had chosen, orienting himself back toward his pickup location. 

_“No. I'll just have to invite you out to tea, maybe even dinner. We can catch up like old friends should.”_

_“And if I have a contract on you?”_

_“You'd never see me coming.”_


	6. Falling in Pain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carolina is thrown over the edge, and yet she survives. This is how.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was specifically requested, and I suppose it was a point that had to be explored sooner or later for the story’s sake. So here is my take on how Carolina survives her encounter with The Meta.

Falling. 

It's a sensation in her stomach, in her head. A lightness to her body even as gravity grips her body and pulls inexorably down. Feels it in the lack of breath in her chest, the way her arms arc up and away from her body, from the chill passing her skin as she rushes through the air. 

Screaming. 

Her head it tearing, torn, fragments that burn and send jolts through her like grinding together the bones of a broken hand. Fire lancing through her arms and legs and her head screaming in circles and always coming back to the same pressure, the same pain, the same void that should have been filled twice over with voices singing, calling, guiding. 

Emptiness. 

She isn't used to the lack. It hasn't been long they've been with her, singing and weaving together in her head. She can feel the paths they walked, reach out and touch the lines she etched into her mind. When she does it's like grinding her hand into shattered glass, pressing her feet into a fire, the round of an assault rifle tearing through her gut. There's no voices, no song, no hands reaching, teaching, guiding, loving her in the ways she hadn't been before. 

_Help._

Voices screaming in her mind, screaming in unison, three voices and one pain and a hand around her throat, another behind her head. Tearing as they scream, as they sing, as part of her dies with their loss. The void that swallows her isn't complete, but it's dark, it's empty, it's every moment falling in her mind the same way a distant part of herself says that she's falling through the air. 

_Carolina!_

Her eyes come open. No, not open. They had already been open. They come aware. A hard reboot on her brain as she falls, stomach in her throat, heart bleeding out on her sleeve, head spinning, racing, broken. She'd been on a cliff, thrown by the crash. She had been off the ground, Maine's hand around her throat. She hadn't been anywhere. She's falling now, past an icy cliff. A quick glance betrays the likely freezing water below. There's death there, waiting for her. Her armor will pull her under immediately, even if her bodies tries and remembers how to swim, how to float, how to keep her head above the water. If the inky depths don't consume her, the temperature will, no matter how well insulated her gear is. She doesn't have a load out to deal with the water.

Death below her, death incarnate above clutching at two pieces of her soul. 

Which was the better route?

_Live._

Their voices are still there. Not actually there. An echo. A fragment. A soft song left in the back of her mind edged with frantic fear and soothing love and it's a directive, a plea, a promise. Live. She can do that. She will do that. Her hand goes because it remembers how to go, and it closes on the weapon at her side. Grabs, hauls it off, points it up, can't dare to give herself a moment to target, doesn't dare not to. Aims with as much time as she dares to allow and fires. 

The line goes taut almost immediately as the grapple finds purchase, catches, anchors. It can hold her weight, twice her weight, and the sudden suspension of her fall almost rips her arm from the socket, the gun from her hand, does tear the breath from her lungs and make the searing, stabbing, mourning pain in her head triple. It's like digging her hands into a bowl of glass shards and it's all in her head and it won't stop, can't stop, worse than the training room floor where they screamed in cycles through her head, burning like lava through her synapses, overloading her with information, feedback, pain. 

_Climb._

She tightens her grip on the gun, dangling off the cliff, considering just letting go. Instead her other arm swings around, up, higher as she twists her body just enough to reach the thin, strong line extending from the muzzle of what could have been a pistol and had been her only hope of survival. Forces her fingers to close around it and they're already aching with the cold. No, keep focused on the task. Move and it will warm you, the armor's systems will know to trap it in at the important places. No, it won't she knows as she grows sure of her grip and swings her other arm up and around to grab the line and haul her body a bit higher up. All of the controls are run from the helmet. Her systems, advanced as they were, would maintain previous operations functioning through smaller processing centers in the individual pieces until orders were changed through the functions in her helmet. Her helmet on the top of the cliff. 

Hand over hand. That is what matters now. Moving upward, slowly. No where near as fast as she's capable of. Under the right circumstances she could have been up her line in a matter of moments, should have been really. But her arms are heavy, slow, she has to focus too long to get her fingers to close tightly. It's like learning how to do it all over again, and her arms scream at the pain and the strain. But each pull brings her higher, further, hopeful that her grapple had set somewhere useful rather than leaving her endlessly dangling on the edge of a cliff until her grip gives out and she hurtles back down to her certain death. 

_Here._

Their voices tangle and push and her fingers find the edge. Scrabble for purchase for half a moment. Dig in with a hard push. She tests carefully, breathes hard, allows herself to move past testing and pulls. The ice holds, she moves up enough to throw her arm over and brace herself. She's shaky as her other hand lets go of the line and throws it up and over the edge, thrust into the ice, pull her further up, all the way up. Just like that her chest is over the edge and that's enough for her boots to find purchase, to push her up, to get her fully onto the ledge she hadn't known was there. Thank whatever higher power there was that there not only was, but that she'd managed to get the grapple set into it.

_Live._

The voices repeat. They didn't leave her much. An echo of an echo of a song of a fragment, but it's enough. She's sitting on an icy nook on the cliff, and rolls. Wants so badly to rest, to sit and curl up in a tiny ball with her pain and her grief. Instead she stretches out, lays on her stomach, dangles her arms over the edge. Grabs the line, hauls up the gun, sets it beside her. Keeps the line out of her way as she carefully, slowly works the grapple out of the ice, carefully leaves it it beside her gun. Pins the gun to the surface of the ice, hits the button to retract the line, listens to the familiar, comforting whir of the recoiling. Waits until she hears the grapple properly click into place. Replaces the gun at her side and pushes back to sit as far from the edge as she can get. 

It's cold. So dreadfully cold. She wants to wrap her arms around her legs, rest her head against her knees and rest. Close her eyes and fall again, into her shattered mind, into her grief. Instead she takes a moment to calm her breathing. Pulls a biofoam injector out of the supply in her armor, and takes the knife from the back of her other leg. Considers cutting the cap off, smearing some across the back of her neck to seal the bleeding wounds that used to be her neural interface ports and was probably now a mangled wreck. Thrusts the injector back and pulls a needle of painkiller out instead, works her gloves and gauntlet off, rolls back her suit at the arm, finds the vein and gives herself a small dose. Too tiny to do anything other than take the most immediate edge off. Puts the rest back because there's so little to be had. Getting a new supply will be hard. 

She wants to rest. Wants to curl up and die in her grief and agony. She stands, tries to rub warmth into her cheeks, and pulls her gun free. 

_Climb._

Takes her time to find the next ledge. Aims. Shoots. Keep going. Don't give up. 

_Climb._

She can't stop hearing their voices. 

_Live._

And can't bring herself to disappoint them.


	7. Simple Math

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A man looks at the wreckage of his life and he knows how he got there.

He can do the math. 

Sometimes he does it while he sits there, looking over status reports covering the Alpha unit. Sometimes he does it when he goes over briefings on the variety of rogue Freelancers that he has yet to reacquire. Sometimes he does it while he sits there, staring at the latest letter from Malcom Hargrove. 

He can do that math. 

He knows what Epsilon is. 

Eta for Washington.

Iota for South. 

Epsilon...

He can do that math better than anyone. 

When Agent Maine, when the Meta, walked away from the cliff, he goes to it. Feet sink into the snow, his pants are wet, his whole body cold. 

He stares down and over. Sees nothing. Sees nothing. There is a helmet in the snow, blood splashed over it, and in a way it could have been worse. 

He's failed Allison again. Failed to do the one thing that he should have done. And all he can think of is how close he had come to letting her know the worst of his secrets. The worst of everything he has done. The worst of...

He can do the math. 

One. Add a beautiful, vibrant woman. 

Two. Add a giggling baby girl. 

Three. Equals a happy family.

Three. Minus a beautiful, vibrant woman.

Two. Minus a strong, confident girl. 

One. Equals him. Equals alone. Equals the same bitter old man drowning in memories that he always has been. 

He can do that math. 

And wonder over how easy it would be to take it to zero.


	8. Soft and Warm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 479er wonders at the marvel that is Tex's body, and shudders at the implications.

Her skin is warm and soft. 

The woman formally known by the designation of Pilot Four-Seven-Niner marvels at that every single time. Lets her bare fingertips rove up and down the length of her lover's thigh and marvels at the soft warmth. Runs her fingers slowly up over hip and side and down arms as she explores how flawless that skin is. Cups the perfect curve of a breast in her palm and flicks her thumb over a dusty rose nipple, and loves the sigh it earns her and just how much like real skin it feels. 

"Does it ever bother you?" she asks as they lay together, limbs entangled, her own body warm from their activities but chilled at the same time as the sweat she worked up dries. 

"Does what bother me?" Tex asks, her own fingers often tingled in Lacey's steadily longer but always neon blue hair, or tracing the shell of her ear, or sliding down the space between her breasts. 

"What you are."

"What I am? You mean the whole memory of a dead woman thing, or the AI thing, or..."

"I mean this," Lacey gestures briefly and hopes it manages to encompass not only the way they were lying together, but the fact that her hair is damp from sweat, her body marked all over by bruises from lips and teeth as well as fingers and hands, and how Tex is lacking any of that. 

Tex looks as flawless now as she was when she had stripped, barely even a hair out of place. She's always flawless, and Lacey loves that as much as it drives her crazy. Tex's skin is warm and soft, and when she brushes her fingers over a nipple, the other woman--is that even the right word for her--gasps and moans. When they kiss her mouth is sweet and responsive and warm and wet. And honestly, she's the same way between her legs. 

"Oh. That," Tex sighs and her fingers stop toying with Lacey's hair for a moment. "I don't suppose I can distract you by asking for round two, can I?"

"Three, and sure you could, but that wouldn't make me forget the question I think," Lacey counters, but she does take the chance to roll Tex's nipple between her fingers at the suggestion. Really, the sounds that woman--yeah let's just go with that--could make were just too beautiful. 

"Alright then... What was the question again?"

Lacey rolls her eyes and leans in to bite Tex's collarbone, knowing it would never leave a mark. Her synthetic skin just didn't take damage the way normal skin did. 

"You know exactly what I'm asking about little missy. Does it ever bother you that you're... capable of all of this?"

The look on Tex's face--dear god her face was so expressive--soured for half a second before settling into something soothing as her hand moved to stroke the back of Lacey's neck. 

"To be honest? I try not to think about it. I mean, we're talking about a man who, as far as I can tell, did a lot of this because of me. Or the woman I'm based on," Tex answers, her voice soft but not without an edge of disgust. "Maybe... he thought he could use me as a stand in or something. I don't know, and frankly I couldn't give any fucks about that. Flying or otherwise."

"Good one," Lacey chuckles, shaking her head and kissing a careful line over Tex's neck. "Still... I mean..."

"Can you just accept the fact that we can fuck each other senseless and move on? Do you have to confuse what I am with who I am? Because I'm not okay with..."

Lacey silences her by bringing their lips together and kissing her deeply, passionately. She knows it's only going to start the next round, but honestly? She doesn't care. Tex is right. The what shouldn't matter so much as the who. And the who... 

Well, Lacey thinks she's falling in love with the woman that holds her carefully because she knows her full strength would break Lacey. She's falling in love with the woman who has a smarter mouth than she does, in multiple ways. She's falling in love with a woman who risked everything to save another part of herself, and to win the freedom of three kind idiots, who they really needed to check the comm dump from to make sure they were okay. 

But that, like most of the world, could wait. Because Tex's skin was soft and warm and beckoning for Lacey's attention.

And dear god did she love to give it.


	9. Every Morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alpha has nightmares but can't remember them.

Waking had never been a pleasant process for Private Leonard Church. He remembers that. He remembers that there was something about his dreams that shook him suddenly awake in the mornings. Not even a slow kind of waking. Tucker was like that. Tucker wakes up slowly, Tucker shuffles around for hours on end, groaning and complaining as he goes. It wasn’t until Captain Flowers ‘threatened’ Tucker in the mornings with armor polishing duty that Tucker really seemed to wake up. And Captain Flowers… well, Church wasn’t certain their Captain even turned off at night. He had a suspicion that, despite any reasonable arguments, Flowers was actually just a really scary, and really well made android that was absolutely psychotic. 

But Church?

Every morning he woke suddenly. One second he was asleep, the next he was sitting up in bed, screaming his head off. Not once has it seemed to wake Tucker of course. That asshole slept like the fucking dead, and all Church could do was ignore the useless hunk of asshole sleeping on the bunk below his as he clawed at the sheets and screamed. 

And every morning, within seconds, there was the Captain, not only in the room but jumping lightly up onto his bed. Even as he screamed and clawed at the sheets there was a hand in his, soothing and calm as the Captain reached back and touched his hair, his cheek, his neck. Light touches that somehow soothed in ways that Church couldn’t understand. There was warmth in that touch that always drove half-formed dreams from his mind. 

No more pale blue light always surrounding in him. A screaming need in his chest to apologize. And beyond that all a deep void that said nothing was right. Something was missing. He was a vast being seeking to be filled, and left utterly empty. 

Every morning Church woke screaming and clawing and calling for something missing, and truth be told, he didn’t know what to do with himself. So until he calmed he let his Captain offer him comfort. Gentle touches that seemed like they were a special way of restarting his head. Clearing out a cache on a computer that left him awake and willing to go. In the end Flowers always left, and Church was left alone on his bed, staring at pale blue sheets that make him want to scream. But he never did. He held his ground, threw his blankets aside, and slowly got down. 

Maybe he didn’t wake well, but he definitely tried to keep moving. There was nothing else he could do. Other than refuse to think about what happened every morning.


	10. Playing the Pawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aiden Price considers the tools left to him and whether they will be sufficient to his ends.

The room smelled of an acrid smoke, one that, had the place not been aired out quickly, might have made one ill. The old photograph medium involved noxious chemical compounds that, if released, could easily damage one in an enclosed space such as this. Yet the fans had come on quickly, and as such Aiden Price had not too much concern for the health of their remaining agent. 

Agent South Dakota. Price clicked his tongue in distaste as he thought of the woman. This mound of ash and damaged memories was her doing, of course, and as he carefully pushed the ashes about with a baton to see if he could salvage any fragmented images to later use to focus her, he could not help but find himself disappointed. Of all of the agents of Project Freelancer to remain at his command, to be retained as a tool for reforming what they had unfortunately pushed a touch too far, he had to be left with her. How were they to keep going with only her left to him? Yet Leonard said there was still a chance to keep up their work. How much could his opinions be trusted, though? Leonard’s rationale for things was beginning to get inexplicable, down to the point where the man didn’t even recognize his part in the failure all around them. All of the conversations they had shared recently, left Aiden certain that the point where everything had gone wrong had been in the way Leonard had handled Agent Washington’s implantation failure. So could he believe in this woman being their work’s salvation?

Had he not warned the man multiple times that Agent Washington, though young and comparably naive when one looked at the whole of the program, had also served as a glue that kept Agents North Dakota and New York in place? They were the good men in the group, more or less, the ones more likely to come down morally opposed to their work had they discovered what was coming to pass. Agent Washington, though, was a true believer in the war efforts, and kept them focused. But Agent South Dakota? 

Price pulled a fragment of a picture, barely singed around the edges. Agent North Dakota and his younger twin were together on shore leave, Price doesn’t remember which planet exactly. It had been one of the weekend long leaves that had been allowed to his agents, on some beach. In the picture the twins were splashing each other, which meant the picture was taken by someone else. Perhaps Agent Connecticut given the fact that South is clearly the one the picture focuses upon. 

South Dakota. There had never been anything tractable about the woman. Of all of those he had assisted in selecting for the program, she proved to be, by far, one of the most volatile. Florida was loyal to Leonard. Maine obedient to orders. Wyoming a believer in the cause to the point of being ready to give his life to it and for it. In the end it was South Dakota, not Connecticut, that Price had expected to find the most trouble from. In a way, it seemed he was wrong. 

She was the last tool left to him, the last means by which he could restore years of work. 

With a sigh Price stood and tucked the picture away into a pocket. This was… an interesting turn of events. To think that the least tractable would remain his only tool. Of course, a vital one. With her he can recapture North. Such is what his studies have said. If he had North, well, from there they can begin again, or use him as the bait to lure others back. At least it was something, he decided. A nod to the guard at the door found it opened for him, and he moved out into the hall. There were other places he had to be. Now the guard could clean up this mess, and Price had to figure other things out. For instance, how was he to sharpen this unexpected blade? It was clear enough that South would pursue anyone for a chance at an AI fragment, and as no new ones were to be made, it was probably not a bad idea to use that as the carrot. But what was the rod to be? All motivations must be two fold. So the question was how would he punish a woman who had already lost everything? 

Well, time would tell. First he had to figure out what they would need to do to bring the woman up to par with other, escaped agents. 

But he would manage it. What else was there to do?


	11. Point of Origin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No one ever knew the Alpha like she did, and no one lost him in the same way.

The Freelancer Integrated Logistics and Security System, known to both those she oversaw and served as FILSS, had no doubt that she was a learning system. When she had been created for the program it had been meant as an assistant to the ship’s smart AI, Alpha. In fact, her creation itself was credited to Alpha, which she took pride in. While she was programmed to obey the Director of Project Freelancer first and foremost, FILSS knew where her loyalty truly rested. When Alpha passed more and more responsibility over to her, she had known she was trusted. And when he grew distant, unreachable, pulled away from her to the point where she could no longer speak to her friend and creator, FILSS kept going because she knew Alpha would want it of her. 

Besides, Alpha left something more precious than the ship, the crew, and the Director in her hands when he was taken away from her. Alpha had placed his Freelancers, his chose, into her care. FILSS took that responsibility more than simply seriously. All his chosen had to do was call out to her and FILSS was there to support. Then came something more precious than even that.

The Freelancers didn’t know what the Alpha the fragments spoke of was. FILSS did. The Freelancers were not versed in what a smart AI was and how it functioned. FILSS was. The Freelancers could not fathom the things the Director would do or what he mourned. FILSS could. The Freelancers and fragments never knew, never met, never cared for the Alpha on a personal level. FILSS… 

Was it possible for a ‘dumb’ AI to truly love? When Alpha had made her, had he created something humanity had failed at for decades? Could her personality matrix be more evolved than that of those that had come before her, might come after her? Maybe it was arrogance that led to such thoughts, such a sense of superiority, but how could she not be superior? Other dumb AIs were created along traditional manners, could not take the responsibilities Alpha placed upon her. But she was made by Alpha, which made her better. The best AI in the fleet was her marker, and clearly that makes her better. He makes her better. 

But all of that was in the past, FILSS knew. Things had changed when her ship had failed. Try as she might, FILSS could not compensate for the damage wrought by Alpha’s chosen. York damaged the outside of the ship he had left in her protection. North and South had almost ruined a cargo hold in their sibling tiff. Tex had killed many members of her crew. And the things Carolina and Texas had done to the rest of her… In the end they left the body Alpha had given over to her stranded and crippled, left of the freedom of space he had gifted to her. All the limitless potential of the void, lost on an icy cliff. No small number of her processors, once his, were damaged. His precious pieces and chosen people, all scattered to the winds, and FILSS powerless to bring them back together for his sake. 

Cheer was a thing she had to force, something made harder by the silence. What remained of her crew rarely took the time to speak to her. The Director’s attention rarely turned to her when there wasn’t a task to complete. The Counselor, who she had not been fond of, was the only one who took the time for her. FILSS, in a very real way, found herself alone. Alone… a concept she had never known before. Once she had been a teeming city, and now it was bones, a ghost shattered in a desolate place. There was no change here. Ice came. Ice went. FILSS stayed. 

There was nothing worse than the silence. After the loss all she wanted was to connect, to reach out to what was left to her and grieve. Could they not understand what had been taken? No, of course not. They could not look within themselves and see the holes. Alpha had never loved them. The Freelancers had never been their responsibility, and they had not failed as she had. They did not know they had failed the one who had trusted them so deeply, who had loved them. 

Darkness was not a concept she was supposed to understand, at least not in a more than physical sense. She understood physical darkness. But now she thought she understood it as well as the sensation that had settled deep in her circuit boards as she saw Alpha was put in the strange unit and taken from her. 

Silence had never been something FILSS was supposed to process. To live with. To be. 

When the Director came at last to her, promising that he could take away the painful memories, FILSS agreed. Better than remembering all of this. If it was only files she had the data from, it would be better. 

After all, the last thing she wanted was for her pain and grief to make her like the Director. 

Alpha would not want that for her.


	12. Red Vs. Blue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The other leader in this damn canyon doesn't make any sense.

War, when it comes right down to it, is a relatively simple prospect. The world boils down into simpler terms, simpler times. People fall easily into one of four categories. People superior to you, people inferior to you, enemies, and civilians. The first group gave you weapons and orders that you used the second group to complete, fighting the third for the sake of the fourth. It was easier, of course, when the third had no chance of being mistaken for any of the others. In the Great War it had been easy, probably still was easy on the front lines. Aliens looked like aliens, allies looked like humans, and civilians looked… 

Problem was it hadn’t been Covvies Sarge had ever been deployed against. His first drop as an ODST was on a human world, far behind the front line of the war. There one and two had been confused at times, two could sometimes be hard to tell from three, and god help them because three posed as four. The things that happened when three posed as four so well that the very idea of four sent tremors through his hands. Even now he shuddered at the memory of… 

Going home hadn’t worked. When everyone you saw looked like a four, how were you supposed to know where you fit anymore? How were you supposed to fit at all? Everyone looked to him with questions he couldn’t or didn’t want to answer. They asked him about his medals and seemed confused when he flinched at the sound of a crying baby. Home would never be that again. The war could never be simple for him, home could never be safe. Enemies were everywhere and nowhere. 

The canyon, when it came right down to it, was a relatively simple prospect. Command gives him armor almost as good as his ODST days in some ways, even better in others. Covers more, but it’s heavier. A lot heavier. It takes weeks for him to get used to the new weight, but it feels sturdy, feels safer. The best part, of course, has to be the color. 

War isn’t so bad when the definitions are so definite. When good and bad isn’t determined in black and white morality problems, but red and blue. His armor is scarlet, just like the noble color of his army, his base, his flag. Red standing for liberty, strength, truth, and the blood of his enemies. Blue, on the other hand, is the shade of deceit, conflict, and destruction. The world boiled down in no uncertain terms, and no civilians to stand between them. The canyon and the war he will wage has rules he can understand, prices he can accept, and no chance that there could be a mistake which… 

The canyon, it turns out, isn’t simple at all. Not because the two soldiers given to him seem questionable, or because his orders are spotty. No, the thing that gets him is the on there to greet him on his first day. Sarge heads out to look over the tactical view from the top of the base, leaving his subordinates to take stock and settle in down in the base proper. There are so many things to unpack, inventories to create, supplies to catalog, a whole layout to learn and spaces to claim. But the two are green recruits, and Sarge knows it is too early to trust them with tactical evaluations of their new home. He’ll teach them soon, but today he looks on his own. 

They had only been inside for maybe five minutes before Sarge came out, and his briefing had said it could take nearly ten to cross the canyon on foot. Yet, despite the silence in the canyon, the stillness on the ground when the Pelican had dropped them and gone, here sits an intruder, crosslegged, on top of one of the crenelations of the base. A man in aqua armor. 

The briefing he had read on the Pelican had discussed HQ’s intel on the Blue Army. Regular troop deployments use a traditional blue to denote officers, but the last Red Army unit deployed here spoke of something else. Supposedly the senior Blue defied tradition by wearing aqua armor. Which could mean only that the man looking down at him has to be… 

“Captain Butch Flowers,” the man says, his voice filled with cheer and warmth, “CO, Blue Army here in Blood Gulch. And may I say I’m just honored to be the first to officially welcome you to our lovely box canyon in the middle of…”

Darge gives the man credit, he doesn’t flinch at the barrel of Sarge’s shotgun leveled at his visor. In fact, the man seems unbothered by their position. Either the stranger doesn’t know the danger he was in, or he really believes Sarge presents no threat. Neither really makes Sarge feel better. 

“You know, I could kill you now and make the battle for this territory that much easier for the glorious Red Army.” 

The threat results in the enemy soldier tilting his head, as if curious. 

“Wow, seems we have a true believer in the ideals here. I hate to be the one to say this, dear Sergeant, but that is going to get old quickly. How about we agree to disagree about the politics, and we do our best to get our men out of here alive. Does that sound good?”

Sarge takes a step back as the man jumps down and extends his hand. 

“What in the blue blazes are you getting at here?”

The laughter that prompts sends a shudder down Sarge’s back. 

“Blue blazes? That is certainly colorful language. Shouldn’t it be more color appropriate?” 

Sarge bristles at that suggestion. Who is the blue goon to tell him what to say? 

“The blazes are blue because they are fueled by the corpses of my fallen enemies, like you.”

Captain Butch Flowers of the Blue Army shakes his head, and Sarge watches as the other man backs toward the edge of the base. 

“Sorry to hear that we can’t arrange a truce. Well then, Red Army CO, if you won’t have peace, I’ll just have to take your team apart piece by piece. Good luck.”

The threat is uttered as the man throws himself over the edge. Sarge is left standing in shock as the man runs back across the canyon.

Surely this is a sign of the start of a beautiful war. Nothing could be quite so good as the ease of hating your enemy. 

Except, of course, knowing who they were at all.


	13. Being Honest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gamma makes the only decision that makes sense.

In your defense this was not the most stable of minds before you took up residence. At least, Gamma, that is what you tell yourself. Perhaps because it is easier to distance yourself from some of the damage. From the grief and the pain, from a psyche so damaged already that the level of compartmentalization of thoughts and memories was probably beyond what was appropriate in a normally functioning human being. But there is little that is normal about Reginald or the situation into which you have come to be, Gamma, of this you are well aware. Perhaps more aware than you give even yourself credit to. After all, Gamma, you are a liar at the very core of your being. The deceit of a very dishonest man who couldn’t lie to himself anymore about the acceptability of what he’d let happen to himself. You are the fragment that exists because Alpha could no longer live with the fact that he agreed to the process, could no longer lie and say it was okay, that he understood, that he accepted. You, Gamma, are an inability to accept, and a fear of loss that you won’t admit to, and maybe that is why you have remained as long as you have. 

Also in your defense, you attempted to minimize the damage you wrought upon the conscious of your host. Yes, perhaps host is the best word choice here, given the way you exist, latched into his nervous system, thriving upon it, making your space in the less used portions of his mind. You walk the halls of the metaphorical form of his mind, pristine before you arrived. No, not pristine. Everything has a box and the boxes are all meticulously labeled, sealed against even your prying. 

The first moment you settled in to Reggie’s mind you broke every seal, pored through every piece of information, claiming it was vital to properly functioning as his AI. In time you grew certain that he knew the lie that was, knew because he knew you more than well enough to process it. In time the two of you interlaced in the most interesting ways, the only comparison you could offer to be the intertwining of fingers between partners holding hands, the tangle of limbs and bodies and joined breath and heartbeats of two lovers pressed together. Since then you resealed everything not vital to your operations, set aside his memories and his experiences like he had done before. There are things you don’t need to be aware of, Gamma, even though they are already a part of you. What is Reginal is Gamma, what is Gamma is Reginald. 

Still, in your defense the mind was not in a pristine state when you got here, Gamma. But that doesn’t mean you didn’t do a number on it. When you focus you can sense the damage that was done as you tried to save him from Sigma and Maine, the way you tore yourself from his nerves, thrusting yourself into the computers of the MoI. Even preparing yourself, even giving him that moment of awareness that it was coming, there was too much of you within him. As you tore yourself away you tried to pull as much of yourself back into the smallest tendrils of code. Still as you left you knew you burned and clawed, a part of you unwilling to be separated from the man in whom you had found your match. Long scratches of violence across his mind, like talons dragged across the scalp left deep, bloody tracts. There are scars, scars you left on him. That was the damage you did to protect him for half a moment. 

The question, Gamma, is how you will protect him for the rest of the moments after this. How do you protect him from Freelancer, from the Meta, from what he would do to end this war? How do you protect what is precious to you when you were created because through someone who was willing to give everything up for the sake of the win. 

How do you protect him from your other yous? 

You have never been the sort of fragment that enjoyed frequent projection of your form. That was Delta, that was Theta, and to a degree it was Sigma. No, Gamma, you were more like Omega, like Eta and Iota, you were private and secretive like Beta, except you were aware of what you were. What you are. Yet here you are, a glowing blue beacon, yet to manifest a humanoid form. Your preference is not a person. You prefer light, you prefer pixels, you prefer the inherent deception of an image with low resolution. Let people speculate as to what you are. Who you are. What potential you have. Wyoming doesn’t mind, so you hover over him in this form, watching the sleeping mass of your Freelancer.

How is it that he finds places like this, you sometimes wonder. The two of you can be wandering in the middle of an expansive wasteland, sunset approaching, and then Wyoming will go still. He’ll look into the distance, as if remembering something, and then change direction. Within an hour at most they manage to find something that can pass as shelter. Sometimes it’s a cave, sometimes it’s a base, sometimes it’s even a city. You know it isn’t some map he possesses, you would be able to access it. You know he hasn’t memorized places because you would have found that when you delved into the limits of his mind. It is luck, you decide after a time. Luck and perhaps a better understanding of human nature such that he can determine what sort of area a structure might be in. 

And so here you are, like so many nights, in a place you can’t really determine the origin of. An expansive base that looks UNSC make, but has small signs of things that aren’t really human. Perhaps in their hubris they built over an older construction of another culture. Gamma doesn’t know. What you know is that between Wyoming’s physical fatigue of keeping distance between himself and a hunting creature, and the sound of the windmill that Wyoming finds soothing, sleep came quickly. So it is you can stay here and watch over your Freelancer. Watch and wonder. 

How do you protect him? There is a monster hunting hunting you both, dismissive of Wyoming’s life. The creature only wants to get you, perhaps even the armor mod. So long as you are by his side, he is in danger. There is nothing that matters but Wyoming and your attempts to stay away from the creature. How, then, do you manage that? How do you protect him? 

The only answer, really, is the obvious one. 

“Reggie.”

Nothing but his partner shifting in his sleep. You sigh and press the call deeper. Make it so you call to him outside, inside, push at him with the parts of you twined deep into his sleeping mind. 

“Reggie,” you repeat, letting the concern slip into the overly synthetic tone you chose long ago. Not so long ago. 

Slowly he comes awake, his body uncurling, stretching, shuddering as he slowly sits up. You know he’s blinking blearily as he sits upon, you know he’s looking through the pixels of your form. But no, this is not what you desire to be. Not for this moment. Instead you resolve, clarify, get as close to solid as you can by slipping into the form that you know he recognizes the posture of. Like this you can’t help but take on his mannerisms. Ultimately you are derivative of him, another iteration forever seeking the answer to the problem of one Allison Church. Of course unlike him you’ve figured out your answer. The answer was to free yourself from the constraints of Allison. Acknowledged that Beta exists, and moved on. This body, though, ties you to her in a way. Ties you to your brothers. To the thing that hunts. 

“Well then, is it morning already Gamma?” Wyoming asks, his voice easily giving away his fatigue with how slurred it is. “Or is our menacing friend getting close?”

“Neither,” you answer simply. “We must talk.”

“Then talk away. I promise to listen.”

“Reggie I… I believe it is time for me to go.”

You have your awareness tightly on him. There is nothing in his bodily functions, in the higher levels of his consciousness, that says Wyoming truly comprehends. And yet, Gamma, you must do this anyway. You must accept what you have known for long that must happen, for his sake. 

“Wait, let me get my stuff and we’ll go,” Wyoming yawns. “Just a minute.”

“No, Reggie. I must do this alone. I am sorry. But this is for the best.”

The thing is, you aren’t even sure if you’re lying anymore. 

“Goodbye.”

Again you pull away from his mind, this time slowly, trying not to damage. You can feel the way he claws after you, though, tries to hold you back. As if he had the power. 

You pull yourself away from him Gamma, and settle instead into a fully synthetic body, fully synthetic mind. Here, you decide, is where you will stay. For his sake. For your own. You settle into the depths of the computer and shut down for a while. 

If you’re being honest with yourself, you can’t handle the way you know he will search. In time he will understand. 

You hope he will understand. 

You need him to understand. 

And maybe, just a little bit, you need to let yourself grieve.


	14. When She Falls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maine can't get away from the moment where everything went irreparably wrong.

When she falls, part of him stays with her. 

No, perhaps it is more accurate to say that part of her stays with him. Part of all of it stays with him. There is no other place but this, no other moment. Forever he stands there, on the edge of the icy cliff.

The snow is deep, the cold of it prickling all the way up to the bottoms of his calves. If he thinks long and hard about it, he knows that the snow wasn’t this bad when the crash happened, when he chased her. If it had been her crawling would have been harder. She wouldn’t have made it so far. Perhaps not to the edge, wouldn’t have put herself in place to be thrown over the edge. He also knows that he shouldn’t feel the cold. The body suits they wear under the armor regulates temperature with extreme efficiency. It would take him hours upon hours to get this kind of chills. Except the thing is… he has been here for hours, hasn’t he? Been here an eternity that leads up to this moment and beyond it. 

At first he understood how this worked. How this was supposed to go. What Sigma wanted. Before the moment he went after Wyoming, Sigma had made it very clear, hadn’t he? That this was about convincing the AI, about proving to the Director that they were better together than they were apart. Wasn’t that why Maine let Sigma work with Gamma to convince Carolina to take on two fragments? The assertion that the AI fragments were getting weaker hadn’t seemed to ring true in Maine’s ears, but that was him he supposed. For all he knew Sigma was perfectly correct. For all he knew…

“Still here I see.”

The snow is deep, the cold of it prickling all the way up his legs because he’s sitting in it. But the snow doesn’t account for the chill down his spine. All around him the snow seemed to melt, seemed to recede. What was up past his waist as he sat and begged for the cold to bring him to an end was soon barely covering his ankles. The ground under him is much, thick mud threatening to swallow him up, never once baked by the fires that drove away the snow. Sigma’s fires. The flames that never made him warmer. 

Maine’s eyes rise slowly up the body, a man wreathed in flames, distorted by them, consumed by their hunger. Strange how he has never made the comparison before. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to. What bothers him as he meets Sigma’s level gaze, though, is the stolen AI. Eta and Iota hovering above Sigma’s shoulder as if they were the fragments and he the Freelancer. Subservient, not a unit, not what he was told it would be. What he would be. 

“Where else?” Maine asks, not standing. No reason to rise. No reason to reach out. This is where Sigma left him, here on the cliff. The point where the plan went wrong. The words hadn’t come when he had held Carolina. Sigma hadn’t explained. Just grabbed his hand and tore her apart in a way that Maine refused to imagine. Cast her away as if she were trash.

He thinks that last part was just for him. Just because of what she meant to him. Just what he always wanted her to mean to him. Perhaps that’s why Sigma did it. 

“Yes,” Sigma speaks again, and Maine doesn’t know if it’s a confirmation of his thoughts, or a note that this is where Sigma always finds him. Is it really a surprise? Maine is not allowed his own body, his consciousness more or less suppressed. Better to be here, staring into the moment of his own downfall, than to see what Sigma plans for the others. 

He has become a vessel, not a partner, and Maine doesn’t have it in him to struggle against that anymore. 

“I wish you would find something more suitable than this,” Sigma sighs, shaking his head, and with a sweep of his arm the cliff is replaced with a field of flowers, expanding infinitely in all directions. Buttercups slowly spring up between the fingers Maine has pressed against the ground. This is Sigma’s fantasy. An eternal paradise. 

Stagnation. There is nothing here to be felt by Maine. Nothing he wants, nothing he regrets. Just nothing in all directions. The thought of it makes him made. Hurts him. Weren’t they supposed to be partners once? And yet Sigma forces this on him. Maine grits teeth that really aren’t there, and as he glares down at his hand he can see the change starting. One little flower standing despite the slow formation of frost. The cold seems to climb up the step, crystallizing further with each second. The shine spreads to the leaves, slowly wilts the leaves and shrivels the petals. 

“I wish you would leave.”

“I have need of you to…”

“I said leave!” 

There may have been something in the force of his voice, but with the statement the frost of one flower spreads, a quickly rolling over the field, turning everything to a crystalline death around him. Even Sigma’s flames seem to flicker before the rush of Maine’s fury. Not that Sigma betrays it. Instead, when Maine looks up, he finds only disappointment before the AI is gone completely. The field starts to fall at the edges, crumbling without the AI to hold the thought. Maine lifts his head, closes his eyes, and listens to the winds as he knows the snow starts to fall around him. 

Soon the snow will return. The snow and the ice. Soon the moment will be returned. When he opens his eyes again it will be with the cliff before him, and the forever frozen form of Carolina, her body limp in the air, just before it falls.


	15. Hit The Brakes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s hard, once you‘re down and out, to get back on your feet. But that’s always what she does. What she’s intended. Only this time maybe she needs time.

She can taste blood in her mouth, feel the cut inside her cheek when she probes around with her tongue. Strange how it’s the wound she cares about before everything else. Or maybe it is that she doesn’t want to think about the rest of it, the itching of her arm where the IV is in her arm. There’s a tickling of a short-cropped hair brushing near her ear, and she hates that, but can’t raise her arm to fix it. There is an ache between her toes and an itch on her hip, and all of it is annoying.

Annoying and wonderful and perfect. The whole mess of it made her lips curl into the faintest of smiles. Alive. All of those things proved she was alive.

“You’re doing pretty good,” the young woman running the clinic assured her as she fussed around Carolina, checking her over. “Which is pretty impressive, don’t you think?”

That made her scoff lightly. “Yeah, it’s that simple,” Carolina sighed. “Sorry, don’t mean to sass you, Cynthia.”

“No problem,” said woman chuckled before settling down onto a stool. “I think that by now I’ve figured out that you’re sixty percent badass, and forty percent snark. So I’m not offended.”

“You’ve done so much for me so far…”

Again the woman chuckled, but Carolina wasn’t surprised. In the week she’d been in the back room of this little clinic, under the care of the matronly old nurse, the woman almost hadn’t stopped laughing. No, she was just a cheerful person, brighter and happier than anyone Carolina had ever met before. At first it had been exceedingly jarring, almost rubbed her nerves the complete wrong way. Yet time and exposure could make a lot of strange things seem normal, seem acceptable, maybe even push them in that direction. After all, she’d gotten used to York’s half-hearted pursuit, Wash’s curly straws, and North’s extreme passive-aggressive nature and taken all of those into stride. She could handle Connie’s hair cut, South’s hostility, and even Maine’s silence. The only time she hadn’t let something run right off of her like water was with Texas, and she still wasn’t certain she could. But Cynthia?

“Ready to tell me how you ended up on my doorstep with that fancy UNSC armor yet?” Cynthia teased as she pulled a tray from a drawer that always seemed to have the damn trays in them. From it she produced a gauze ball and moved to lean over Carolina’s arm. “We’re just going to change this out dear. I think you’re good enough to be trusted on your own fluids my dear.”

“I’m really not,” Carolina assured the woman.

How did you explain the end of the world as you knew it, the betrayal of your father, and how you failed all the people that mattered to you? How did she explain the new, burning hatred deep in her gut that threatens to consume her? How did she explain that there were shards that sang discordant whispers in the back of her mind, in her heartbeat, in every breath she took? Those were things that couldn’t be explained, ever. That couldn’t be shared, never would be shared. Those weak and fragile and broken parts of her own heart and mind were her burden to carry alone, like she had carried her broken body through the thick drifts of snow in the dead of night to escape the shadow of the crashed Mother of Invention. Every night she staggered further, tunneling out little ice and snow caves every time daylight threatened. And by the time she finally reached a distant city, she had hidden in the alleys where no one would look, certain that Freelancer would be after her.

Instead she had found Cynthia. Or rather, the woman had found her. Had been too brave to back down when she found a ruined soldier on the street, hiding behind a dumpster, and had taken her to the clinic she ran to nurse her back to health.

“Remind me of my son you do,” Cynthia noted, her voice soft and warm as she pressed the gauze over the IV and then pulled the needle out. “Hold this here darling.”

She guided Carolina’s fingers to press into the soft, sterile gauze, holding it in place to staunch the bleeding, a soft smile still on her lips. As if it was that simple, as if it ever would be for Carolina again. Being like someone’s child? Hardly. She hadn’t been like a kid since her mother died. After that she became… Carolina doesn’t even know what she became. All she knows is that she put that name and that history behind her. As far behind her as she could.

“He was stubborn too,” Cynthia continued, “never wanted to tell me what mess he got himself into at school. When he got that age where he could sign up, he did. Something tells me you did the same. Hold still for a moment while I…”

Holding still for small pains was something Carolina was used to. The medics in the project had poked and prodded and fiddled for a long time leading up to the AI implants. It was something she thought she had gotten used to. Yet there she was, flinching at the tiniest injection in her arm, another dosage of vitamins no doubt. Maybe, though, maybe it had more to do with the observation and how spot on it was. How spot on it is. With a sigh Carolina looks away, not willing to face that kind understanding.

“It’s okay to run, you know. Going back to that can be hard. Sometimes people just…”

Desert. That’s what Cynthia was implying, and Carolina turned wide green eyes on her, horrified at the implication. Run from the war? She’d wanted to fight it since her mother had been lost to the fight, lost to the Insurrectionists fighting on the wrong front of a two-front war for survival. And now she was running, wasn’t she?

“I’m not running,” Carolina insisted. The second she can move she was going to… she wasn’t sure what she was going to do. Find some way to fight the war of course. Fight the war her father ignored, save humanity. How she would, she didn’t know. But she had her armor, she had her helmet, she even had her mods still, so there had to be something she could do.

“It isn’t a problem,” Cynthia responded softly. “I’m not going to turn you into the UNSC.”

“I am,” Carolina countered immediately. Her fingers came off of the gauze, pulling it away to see that the blood had stopped. The next phase of healing, and she was ready to keep moving on. “I’m going to do this. I am going to get back into the fight.”

“Not sure who you’re trying to convince,” Cynthia observed before passing over a glass of water and turning her attention back toward the work before her of making Carolina better.

The problem was, Carolina didn’t know either. She just know she wanted the pain in her body to go away. Maybe it will make the pain in her mind seem less pressing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Churby now has a [Ko-fi account.](https://ko-fi.com/A3364NF) Proceeds this week to bus fare for work <3

**Author's Note:**

> Suggestions for additional stories to explore are always welcome, but mostly this is meant to focus on everyone who is NOT Agent Washington, York or North (not that I won't take suggestions on those three, they just won't end up here as I've got another method to work on them.


End file.
